Microsoft Identity Bounty Program Pays $500 to $100,000 for Bugs

A new Microsoft bug bounty program asks researchers to hunt down vulnerabilities affecting its identity services in exchange for rewards ranging from $500 to $100,000.

Microsoft has been building its portfolio of identity services for both consumer (Microsoft Account) and enterprise (Azure Active Directory) accounts. Researchers who participate in the Identity Bounty Program will submit flaws they discover in Microsoft's identity solutions and certified implementations of select OpenID standards, the company states.

In order to be eligible for payouts, submissions must meet certain standards: Vulnerabilities must be original, previously unreported, lead to the takeover of a Microsoft account or Azure AD account, include the impact and attack vector, and detail the steps to reproduce the flaw.

"A high-quality report provides the information necessary for an engineer to quickly reproduce, understand, and fix the issue," Microsoft explains. This includes a concise write-up detailing background information, bug description, and proof of concept.

Payouts start at $500 for incomplete submissions related to cross-site request forgery, authorization flaws, or sensitive data exposure. High-quality submissions for multifactor authentication bypass or standards design vulnerabilities can lead to $100,000 payouts.

Bugs must reproduce in Microsoft the following identity services listed within scope:

Vulnerabilities within the Authenticator app can be submitted for any version but will only result in payment if the bug can be reproduced against the latest publicly available version.

There are several types of reports that don't count as part of the bounty program. Microsoft will not reward bug reports from automated tools or scans, or those related to denial-of-service problems, Web applications only affecting unsupported browsers and plugins, two-factor authentication that requires physical access to a logged-in device, or unlikely user actions. The range of ineligible reports can be found on the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) site.

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